Secrets behind resurgence of Arsenal Women
Coach has team playing a brand of football that could end their trophy drought, reports Katie Whyatt
After four games, Arsenal Women have sizeable leads over Manchester City and Chelsea, plundering goals at a rate of five a game. Ahead of today’s visit from fifth-placed Reading, Arsenal boast a goal difference of plus-18 and twice as many points, from a game fewer, as reigning champions Chelsea.
Joe Montemurro, 49, last week signed a new long-term contract, with his side’s blistering start all the more rewarding given the backdrop of a barren few years. They last won a league title in 2012, and have often felt some distance away from the side that won four trophies in 2006-07.
Montemurro says: “I’ve always been a coach that loves teams to dominate with the ball. I believe in what Arsenal stand for. It was a matter of me reiterating those messages, and allowing the players the freedom to start to enjoy their football again, to believe in what we’re trying to do. I put levels of clarity into what the ethos and the ethics of the team needed to be as a standard. It’s restoring those beliefs in your everyday work and your everyday language.”
Montemurro was born in Australia of Italian descent, his family having fled Italy after the Second World War. He joined Brunswick Juventus as a junior, a club for Italian immigrants.
“We kept together with the Italian immigrant social groups and cultural groups,” he explains. “I spoke Italian as a young child, still speak it now. When you’re developing as a child, you’re sort of torn between the two cultures, because you spend time with the Australian culture in school and then go home and spend time with the Italian culture. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I got to learn two beautiful languages, knowing two beautiful cultures.”
As a player, Montemurro was a midfield playmaker and spent six months in Switzerland playing as a youth at Neuchatel Xamax, where his fascination with tactics began.
He retired at 28 and moved back to Australia, where his wife, Linda, and their two children still live. He worked in youth football, and took on a handful of senior coaching roles in the men’s game, before switching to women’s football in 2014.
Why? “It’s football, for me. There are cultural nuances and differences, but I look at it always from the perspective of professional football. The really important thing is that it’s about playing a good brand of football and having an effect on people.”